


Bad Islington Blood

by Solitary_Endeavor



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Alternate Universe - X-Files Fusion, Case Fic, Fic Exchange, First Time, Friends to Lovers, John Watson takes no shit, M/M, Story: The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire, Vampire Sex, Vampire Sherlock
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-14
Updated: 2014-08-11
Packaged: 2018-02-08 19:48:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1953942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solitary_Endeavor/pseuds/Solitary_Endeavor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Freaky” Holmes and his partner Dr Watson are the Met’s best resource in solving the unsolvable.  But even Sherlock Holmes can’t be right all the time, and when a murder investigation crosses paths with a private case, Holmes will realize there is still a mystery or two to be solved when it comes to John Watson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gingerhermit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gingerhermit/gifts).



> Written for Auburnrecluse for the AU Exchangelock event.
> 
> Auburn, you mentioned wanting a BTVS crossover, and I would have dearly loved to write it for you, if I’d known the first thing about that show. Instead, I stalked your tumblr and discovered you are also an X-Files fan—the one show I lived and breathed as a pre-teen, my first fandom—so I thought you wouldn’t mind if I went with that. And in consideration of your vampire love, I decided to base the narrative structure around the very best episode of the entire X-Files series, "Bad Blood." I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> Warning: brief (mentioned) situational domestic violence, as it was part of the original ACD Holmes story from which I drew my plot
> 
> I also feel it only fair to mention that this is my first attempt at "case fic," and I was possibly a little too ambitious in jumping right into a Vampire AU/original-case-modernization/X-Files fusion, haha, so please go easy on me (don't look too closely at the pseudo-science behind this universe, maybe...).
> 
> Thank you, Mount_Seleya, for beta and Brit-picking help.

 

* * *

 

John burst into the alley behind the club just in time to watch the fluttering tail of Sherlock’s coat disappear around the corner.  The fire door slammed shut behind him.

 

_~Come on, John, she’s getting away!~_

 

John hurried to follow, briefly palming his coat pocket to reassure himself his gun was still there.  Rounding the corner, John watched Sherlock vault the chain link fence at the end of the building with ease and cursed.

 

“Going around,” John called as he continued toward the outlet which lead back to the road.  Sherlock said nothing, but John felt the familiar, non-verbal pulse of acknowledgement in the back of his mind.

 

John didn’t have the advantage of super-human biology, so he had to approach the situation tactically.  Young vampire in a busy, well lit area; woefully inexperienced, grossly negligent, or both.  In any case, it meant she would head deeper into Soho’s labyrinthine streets in an attempt to avoid the crowds of Saturday nightclub and theatregoers, knowing she’d stick out like a sore thumb.

 

John exited onto the street that ran in front of the club, scattering a group of inebriated teens who hooted after him.  He skirted one taxi, only to nearly be taken out by another before he made it to the pavement on the other side.  The woman had been wearing heels, so biological advantage or not, Sherlock had likely easily caught up to her by now. 

 

Except Sherlock’s presence continued to hum with low-level frustration at the base of John’s skull, definitely not the triumph of success.  There must have been something preventing Sherlock from being able to track another vampire with his usual ease—more drunken pedestrians, witnesses maybe—which meant, if John ducked down the correct alley this side of the street...

 

John barreled around the corner at speed and spotted her: dark skin, long dark ponytail, heels and dark skinny denims.  There was a bit of wobble to her step. 

 

“Stop, or I will shoot!” John called out, pulling his gun.  “You’re wanted for questioning in conjunction with the murder of Sean Wexley.  Stop where you are and put your hands where I can see them!”

 

Their suspect skidded to a halt just outside the light cast by the nearest streetlamp, flinging out her hands.

 

“Please,” she gasped, taking a limping step backwards into the light.  Her eyes were fixed on the gun.  “Don’t kill me!”

 

John took a step nearer, and the girl—quite young, he could see that now—cringed.  John would never be able to pick out vampires as easily as one of their own kind could, but he prided himself on having something of a knack, and he was getting...nothing from the girl.  Well, not exactly _nothing_ , but not enough to read her as a threat.  She appeared unarmed.  She wasn’t even trying to employ a glamour against him, and she seemed more anxious to escape than to stand and fight.

 

Warily, John continued to approach, his revolver held ready but no longer aimed to kill.  Vampire-like behaviour or not, he could see fangs extended as she panted for breath.  If Sherlock had been right about a human pretending to be Vampire, trying to emulate one...  God, she couldn’t have been more than sixteen.

 

John took another step toward her, his free hand raised in a placating gesture. 

 

“I’m with the police.  We know you were at Club Tepes last night, and that you were the last to see Sean Wexley alive.  We just need to bring you in so we can ask a few questions.”

 

It was then that several things happened in rapid succession. 

 

There was the unmistakable thump of Sherlock’s expensive leather oxfords against the pavement behind John, as Sherlock suddenly landed from wherever he'd launched himself—and in the split second John was distracted, their suspect darted forward with inhuman speed to knock the gun form John’s hand, leaping on him and taking advantage of John’s natural reluctance to hurt a teenaged girl. 

 

The hairs at the back of John’s neck prickled with the sensation of Other as she ignored Sherlock’s furious shout and bowled John to the ground.  A hand fisted painfully in John’s hair and wrenched his head to the side, exposing his throat.

 

“Stay back,” she demanded shrilly, her fangs hovering precariously close to John’s vital arteries.  “Stay back, or I’ll suck your friend dry, I’ll do it!  I’m a vampire, d’you hear me, so _back off_!”

 

“Sherlock—” John started to say, a thread of warning in his voice.

 

“Oh, for god’s sake,” Sherlock muttered.

 

John heard him approach, movements unhurried as he stalked forward, and he couldn’t see Sherlock’s face, but he felt the stealthy caress of his partner’s aura as Sherlock gathered himself.

 

Their suspect had frozen under the power of Sherlock’s glamour, unable to move a muscle.  John could feel the terrified pounding of her heart where she leaned against him to hold him down, until it gradually slowed, as Sherlock took control of even that.

 

“Overkill,” John grunted, squirming to free himself from where he was pinned under the girl’s weight.

 

Sherlock ignored him, other than for an irritated scrunching of his nose.  The moment John had struggled to his feet, Sherlock was sweeping in, grasping the girl by her jacket and holding her there with deceptive gentleness.  John watched warily as Sherlock leaned in until he commanded her entire field of vision.

 

“Dhampir,” Sherlock eventually declared, and John was surprised.

 

“I thought Dhampir were extremely rare, almost unheard of.”  John spotted the glint of his gun lying halfway across the alley, and moved to retrieve it.  “All registered and accounted for, with a mentor in place since birth, you said.”

“That’s the idea, yes,” Sherlock drawled, staring down at the girl with interest.  As if she was a particularly pleasing chemical reaction taking place under his microscope.  “Unfortunately, there is the occasional case which slips through the cracks.  Isn’t that right, Jackie?”

 

“Jackie?” John repeated, startled, thinking he must have misheard.

 

“Jackie Ferguson,” Sherlock confirmed.  “Now Jackie, I’m going to release you, and you are going to be a level-headed, reasonable young woman, and neither run nor foolishly attempt to attack us again.  You are going to follow John and myself to the 24-hour café at the end of the street.  You will answer our questions, and if you are exceedingly cooperative, we will not take you into Scotland Yard for further interrogation and a murder charge, how does that sound?”

 

John took in the tableau: Sherlock with his dark coat, moon-pale skin and luminous eyes, hovering over the young girl like some great bird of prey.  Of course Sherlock posed no threat to a teenager, vampire or otherwise, but John supposed she didn’t know that.

 

It was easy to forget that Sherlock came from one of the country’s most powerful lineages when he was constantly draped about the flat in his pyjamas and dressing gown, whinging for tea and torturing his violin out of sheer petulance.  Consequently, John always found himself a bit surprised when Sherlock actually bothered to properly exert himself over another vampire. 

 

“Yessir,” Jackie answered, lower lip a bit wobbly.

 

“Oh, don’t cry, you silly girl!” Sherlock groaned with exasperation.  “ _I’m_ certainly not going to hurt you, but as your extra-human education seems to be poorly lacking, I’ll do you the favor of letting you in on the most important rule of dealing with your own kind, and it is this: there will always be those of our kind more powerful than you.  So much more powerful, that to blot you from existence entirely would require hardly more effort than the thought itself.”

 

John rolled his eyes at the display of melodrama.  He didn’t interrupt, but he wondered if Sherlock realized just how much he sounded like Mycroft at the moment.

“To the aim of staying alive, then,” Sherlock continued, “you will want to be certain to avoid anything so terribly gauche as threatening a single hair on the head of any human who belongs to another vampire, especially one so very much more powerful than you.  Not all vampires possess as much self-restraint as I do.  Do you understand me, Jackie?”

 

Sherlock had dialed back his aura, loosening the glamour enough to allow Jackie freedom of movement once more.  Not that she seemed to notice it.  Her horrified gaze darted to John before she frantically, tearfully nodded at Sherlock.

 

John briefly considered protesting.  Not the claim that he “belonged” to Sherlock—John had lost that argument the moment he moved into 221B—but the fact that Sherlock had to be so heavy-handed about it.  It wasn’t as if John was unable to defend himself.  He _had_ been a soldier, and then Royal Military Police, Special Investigations Branch for a number of years before he and Sherlock crossed paths on an investigation, and John essentially allowed Sherlock to poach him for the Met in order to be his partner in CID. 

 

“Excellent.”  Sherlock straightened up, shaking his coat back into place.  “This particular café has a tiramisu gelato to die for.”  With a wink over his shoulder at John, he nodded in the direction of the street.  “Shall we?”

 

* * *

 

Hours later, after an extended conversation in which Sherlock had done most of the talking and Jackie had done a lot of nodding and “yes sir”-ing, their unfortunate murderer had been sent back home to her parents in a taxi, with the knowledge that she had some serious explaining to do when she got there.

 

John trudged into the flat with Sherlock close at his heels and headed straight for the kettle before his mind caught up with the action; caffeine at half-one probably wasn’t in his best interest, if he expected to get any sleep tonight.  The wee hours of Sunday morning, it may have been, but when one both lived and worked with Sherlock Holmes, weekends tended to lose all meaning.  Sunday or not, the resolution to their murder case wasn’t exactly something the two of them could sit on until Monday.

 

John hovered uncertainly at the kitchen bench as Sherlock dragged himself in after and shut the door.

 

“Did you already text your brother?” John asked.

 

“Nope,” Sherlock answered, popping the terminal plosive.  John listened to Sherlock shrug free of his Belstaff and tried to muster the energy for their typical post-case argument.

 

“And why not?”

 

Sherlock studiously ignored him in favour of heading straight for his bedroom.

 

“Sherlock.  You do realize the reason we have this arrangement, in which Lestrade automatically hands us the non-human related cases, is so that you can hand them off to Mycroft if they get totally bollixed up.”

 

“The case did not get ‘bollixed up,’” Sherlock protested through his half-open door.  “We solved it, rather brilliantly, with a combination of—”

 

“Okay, yes, we did solve it, good on us.  But if we can’t tell Lestrade that Mycroft is handling it, then we, and by extension Lestrade, have to account for things like, oh, evidence and bringing in the perpetrator.”  John hung up his shooting jacket and shuffled wearily to his chair to untie his shoes.  Sherlock passed behind him in pyjamas and dressing gown, and flopped onto the sofa with John’s laptop and a look of supreme indifference.

 

“...Unbelievable,” John muttered under his breath.  “What do you expect us to tell Lestrade in our report, then, hmm?”

 

Because yes, they were privileged to certain...laxities due to Sherlock being who and what he was, but there was still due process to consider, and god forbid they someday come up against Internal Review and not be able to “show their work” with all data points neatly and logically connected.  John had long ago given up on either of them moving any higher in the ranks than Detective Sergeant.  Everyone at the Met except for Lestrade hated Sherlock, and by aligning himself with Sherlock from the beginning, John had essentially committed career suicide.  However, that didn’t mean they had to leave themselves open for charges of gross misconduct, or whatever other accusations it might entertain their more spiteful colleagues to throw their way.

 

Sherlock drummed his heels against the armrest of the sofa, all restless energy.  Probably because John had dared be more concerned with how they were supposed to close the case than he was with how Sherlock had figured it all out. 

 

“We’ll simply do as usual, tell him the minimum of what he needs to know in order to officially close the file.  Meantime, I suppose I’ll be forced to contact someone I know in Records—owes me a favour—and have her locate an appropriate mentor for young Jackie.”

 

John stared at Sherlock incredulously.  “Oh, sure.  And just how are we going to explain to Lestrade that we caught our murderer, without actually producing said murderer?”

 

Sherlock gave a negligent wave of his hand.  “We’ll tell him the truth, or a version of it.  Our perpetrator was a vampire.  We pursued, the suspect was cornered, confessed, and attempted to attack you.  I intervened with efficiency, and that was that.  Obviously, the killer being vampire, the integrity of the body deteriorated in typical, accelerated fashion, leaving no biological trace.  I suppose that means I’ll have to procure something in Jackie’s size, and we should probably smear the clothing with a bit of your blood, you know, for forensics’ sake...”

 

John held up a hand to stop him.  “Claiming a vampire suspect got away from us makes us look like a couple of arses, and honestly I can live with that, given the circumstances.  But you know how I feel about falsifying evidence, Sherlock.”  John narrowed his eyes as another thought occurred to him.  “You’ll just claim our suspect was some random vampire, is that it?  Someone who was either killed or evaded capture, so you had to call your brother and have him take care of things on your kind’s end, clean up the mess you made?”

 

Sherlock was silent, his lips pressed together in that way John privately characterized as ‘sulk pending.’

 

“After you insisted there was _no way_ our killer could be vampire, and everyone who thought so was an idiot?” John pressed.

 

Sherlock ruffled a hand through his hair with agitation.  “You’re the storyteller of the two of us, John!  Surely you can come up with something that conflicts with neither your morals nor your professional ego.”

 

“ _My_ professional ego?” John demanded.  “You’re the one who always has to be right, even when you’re not.”  Sherlock’s mouth opened, and John pointed at him sternly.  “No, you’re not always right, Sherlock.  And it’s not ‘professional ego,’ it’s wanting to make sure we keep our jobs so we can continue to pay the bills.”

 

“Oh please, John, use your brain, you don’t honestly think that a vampire as old as I am hasn’t sufficient investments?”

 

“That’s all very well and good for you, Sherlock, but that still leaves me in need of gainful employment.  Despite what you seem to enjoy implying whenever it happens to suit your needs, I’m not your kept human.”

 

“When it suits _our_ needs,” Sherlock corrected him.  “And if you did lose this job, you’d hardly expect to have trouble finding another, not with your breadth of experience and glowing recommendations from both Lestrade and my brother.”

 

“The point is I don’t want another job!” John huffed, frustrated.  “I like my job right now very much, I like working with you every day, and I don’t want _either_ of us fired!”

 

“Ah.”  Sherlock fixed his gaze somewhere over John’s left shoulder, his posture awkward.  The restless tapping of his fingers came to a halt.  “That.  Er, I mean, me too.  Yes.  Very much.”

 

“All right then,” John said eventually, when the silence began to get awkward.

 

They didn’t do this sort of thing very well, the talking.  They hadn’t talked about it when John put in his resignation with the RMP and applied to the Met.  Hadn’t talked about it as it became increasingly obvious John’s temporary stay at Baker Street, after the incident at his own flat, was proving less and less temporary with every day that passed, until John was discreetly slipping Mrs Hudson a cheque each month with his estimated half of the rent.  John had simply stopped searching for listings, Sherlock had stopped hiding John’s laptop and conveniently shredding the rentals section of the newspaper for “experiments,” and they’d neither of them said a word about the new arrangement in the past six months. 

 

John retreated to the kitchen to fill the kettle and pull down the decaf Harney & Sons and two mugs, since Sherlock seemed determined to punish John for not agreeing with him by forgoing his usual habit of making tea after a long day.  It was something Sherlock had started doing not long after John had moved in, following a poorly-timed explosion of temper and clearly intended as some sort of bribe to make him stay.  Surprisingly, the habit continued to this day, except when Sherlock could get Mrs Hudson to do it for him, or when Sherlock was feeling stroppy and petty. 

 

John opened the fridge to grab milk for himself and hesitated a moment at the sight of Sherlock’s untouched stack of half-litre blood pouches. 

 

“Just regular tea for me,” Sherlock called from the sitting room. 

 

“When was the last time you had a proper meal?” John called back.

 

“Two weeks ago, after the arson case.  You needn’t worry, John.  I’ve gone much longer between feedings in the past.”

 

‘Feedings,’ Sherlock said, but John was fairly certain Sherlock hadn’t fed directly from anyone in the entire time John had known him, possibly longer.  Possibly much longer.  John suspected it had something to do with Sherlock’s past with drugs, as the pouches in the fridge came once a month like clockwork from one of Mycroft’s lackeys, and if Sherlock hadn’t finished off the previous supply by the time a new one was delivered, John could count on Mycroft dropping by the flat within a day, uninvited and unwanted. 

 

John grabbed one of the pouches.

 

While the kettle boiled, John returned to the sitting room to take his laptop away from Sherlock and set it atop the desk.

 

“All right, let’s just get this over with tonight,” John said.  “You still haven’t even explained the whole thing to me, and I know you’re dying to.  So you’re going to tell me your side of the story, and I’ll be able to write it down and not have to listen to you complaining that I ‘left out everything of importance’ when I type up the final report.”

 

“All right,” Sherlock conceded after a moment.  “Do I get my tea, first?”

 

With an aggravated sigh, John walked into the kitchen to finish making both tea and “tea.”  A few minutes later John was back in the sitting room, thrusting Sherlock’s mug into his hands.  Sherlock wrinkled his nose when he saw what he’d been given, but sipped at it nonetheless.

 

John sat down at the desk and pulled up the Pages programme on his computer.  “Start talking.”

 

* * *

 

> _Finally_ , John walked into the bullpen with a paper cup of tea he’d gotten at the café down the street from NSY, not the inferior swill with which they stocked the break room.

 

“‘Finally’?” John repeated, his fingers poised over the keys. “I was on time. I’m always on time to work.”

 

Sherlock screwed up his face with a dubious expression. “Ehh...”

 

John jabbed a finger at him. “No. Of course you’re always going to be at your desk before me if you never leave in the first place.”

 

“This is going to take ages if you’re insisting on interrupting _already_.”

 

“Fine. You know what, go ahead, tell it as you like,” John retorted with a magnanimous sweep of his arm. “‘ _Finally_ ,’” he muttered under his breath.

 

> Finally, John approached Sherlock’s desk, taking in the slew of papers scattered over the surface. 
> 
>  
> 
> “Morning.  What’s this, then?”
> 
>  
> 
> “Email from an aspiring client, came through the website this morning, thinks his wife is a vampire and drinking from their infant son or some such nonsense.  That’s not interesting.”  Sherlock stood to tug on his coat.  “What’s interesting is the call Lestrade just received about a body found behind the vampire-friendly Club Tepes.  Puncture wounds on the neck, reportedly exsanguinated, but we’ll be the judge of that, since it obviously wasn’t done by a vampire.”  Retrieving his own tea from his desk, Sherlock put a hand on John’s shoulder to redirect him toward the lift.  “If we hurry, we can get there before Forensics shows up to muck everything up.”
> 
>  
> 
> “Why ‘obviously’ not a vampire?” John complained as he punched the lift call button.  “You haven’t even seen the body yet.”
> 
>  
> 
> “The club employee who called it in reported that the body was a ‘bloody mess.’  A bit strange, don’t you think, seeing as the point of attacking an unwilling human is generally to drink their blood, not smear it around, and certainly not to leave evidence of it.”
> 
>  
> 
> John stepped into the lift and sipped at his tea, peering dubiously over the rim at Sherlock.  “So you’re saying someone wanted to make it look like a vampire attack, probably attempting to either frame or emulate someone else, but he did a piss-poor job of it.”  John shook his head.  “That’s a dangerous game to play.  Why would someone want to stir up trouble like that?”
> 
>  
> 
> Sherlock grinned as the lift doors closed behind them.  “That’s what I want to know.”

~  
  


> Sherlock gazed down at the body of one Sean Wexley: white male, ginger colouring.  Twenty-one years old, 181 cm, 75 kg according to his identification.
> 
>  
> 
> “Sometimes I despair of the deteriorating intelligence of the Human race.”
> 
>  
> 
> “Sherlock,” John warned from where he stood with the nervy-looking fellow who had called the Met about the body.
> 
>  
> 
> “Who in their right mind could possibly think this would be mistaken for the work of a vampire?” Sherlock wanted to know.
> 
>  
> 
> John turned to their witness (of a sort) and dismissed him.  The man wasted no time retreating inside the club, clearly eager to get back to his morning-shift cleaning duties.  John glanced back at Sherlock with a brief shake of his head, indicating he hadn’t gained any useful information.
> 
>  
> 
> “All right then,” John said as he slipped his notebook back into his pocket.  “What do you think?”
> 
>  
> 
> “Signs of a struggle.”  Sherlock knelt to tug back the sleeve of their victim’s coat, pointed out the faint bruising and shallow scratches along the underside of one out-flung wrist.  “Which, again, wouldn’t be present if indeed a vampire had done this.”  He gestured to the most obvious candidate for cause of death.  “Not to mention the wounds to the throat are positioned more laterally than medially—”
> 
>  
> 
> “Over the jug and not the carotid, yeah,” John agreed.  “Not to mention all the...gnawing.”
> 
>  
> 
> Sherlock indicated the extent of the damage with his index finger.  “Excessive perimortem bruising.  Too much blood on his scarf to suggest that whomever did this had any sort of practice at it.”
> 
>  
> 
> John ‘hmm’ed lowly, reaching into the pocket of his coat for a pair of nitrile gloves and snapping them on.  He squatted opposite Sherlock to carefully manipulate the corpse as he began his own inspection.
> 
>  
> 
> Sherlock sensed Lestrade’s over-caffeinated miasma of exhaustion before he saw the man.  John glanced up over Sherlock’s shoulder as he approached.
> 
>  
> 
> “What have you got for me?” Lestrade inquired, by way of greeting.
> 
>  
> 
> “Not a vampire,” Sherlock said.  “So you can put that thought right out of your head.”
> 
>  
> 
> Lestrade stared down at all the blood.  The waxy, paper-pale complexion of the body.  He scratched at the underside of his unshaven chin and threw a weary glance in John’s direction. 
> 
>  
> 
> Sherlock bristled, prepared to defend himself against such an obvious bid for solidarity, but John merely shrugged and held an upturned palm in Sherlock’s direction as if to say “there you have it.” 
> 
>  
> 
> Lestrade crossed his arms, fisting his hands in his armpits.  “Yeah, but he’s been exsanguinated, hasn’t he?  I mean, obviously our guy made a bit of a hash of it, but there’s not enough blood here for the victim to have bled out entirely, not unless he was killed elsewhere, then moved.”
> 
>  
> 
> Sherlock tossed up his hands.  “Oh, did Anderson come up with that explanation for you on the way over here?  Well, in that case...  Clearly, no human in the history of known memory has ever attempted to commit a crime whilst endeavouring to make it look like the work of vampires!”
> 
>  
> 
> “Then where’s the blood?” Anderson interjected.  Forensics had arrived, fantastic.  “You’re not telling us we’re supposed to believe a human _pretending_ to be a vampire drank this man dry,” he sneered.  “The Human body can only swallow a pint of blood before vomiting,” Anderson insisted, glancing toward John, as if for the confirmation of a medical professional with ample experience in ‘freaky’ and ‘bizarre.’
> 
>  
> 
> Taking a deep breath, Sherlock opened his mouth to tell Anderson not to be an ignorant arse, when John beat him to it. 
> 
>  
> 
> “Not dry,” John said, “just mostly.”  He tugged up the hem of their victim’s shirt and levered the body onto its side so they could see where livor mortis had set in along the ribs and small of the back.  Not as deep as it should have been, considering maximum lividity tended to occur between six and twelve hours after death, and their victim—as evidenced by the stamp on the back of his hand—had indeed entered the club last night. 
> 
>  
> 
> “There’s not any definitive medical research published on the subject,” John reminded Anderson.  “If our murderer suffers from an Identity Disorder in which he or she actually believes they’re a vampire, or from Renfield Syndrome, it’s possible they may have worked to build up a tolerance.  She, probably, would have started by ingesting her own blood, then moved on to bagged blood, if she knew someone who could get it for her, until she felt either prepared or compelled to take on another human being.”
> 
>  
> 
> “The average human adult circulates eight to twelve pints of blood,” Sherlock said.  “Mr Wexley here looks to be toward the middle of that range, so: approximately ten pints.  He’s clearly lost one all down his scarf, was left with enough to show faint signs of livor mortis despite the low temperatures overnight, so let’s say about three pints still _in situ._   Which leaves us with close to six, perhaps seven pints unaccounted for.  However, unless near-starved for months, or in the altered psychological state humans have so charmingly labeled ‘Blood Lust,’ a vampire would have as difficult a time draining a human, entire, as a human would have consuming their own weight in meat.”
> 
>  
> 
> Anderson huffed, clearly not to be put off so easily.  “So if our murderer didn’t drink the blood, what did he do with it?”
> 
>  
> 
> “Obviously she—look at the size of the dental arcade, why don’t you, and the faint hint of a woman’s floral perfume still lingers at the victim’s shoulder and neck—would have had to bring with her a method for collection and temporary storage, which isn’t unheard of as science continues to advance in the interests of quicker and more convenient blood donation.  With the head flung back like this, she could have held some manner of collection container below the incision.  
> 
>  
> 
> “But panic would have meant our victim was struggling for his life, and would have resulted in a much larger mess than we’re already seeing here.  So: faint evidence of defensive wounds against a smaller, likely weaker opponent, yet little to no struggle when it came to the killing blow.  Victim was likely drugged with a moderately quick-acting sedative.  Slipped into his drink inside the club, then, as it started to take effect, our killer coerced him outside, possibly with the invitation to ‘go back to hers,’ or maybe simply a quick tryst in the alley.  The victim was complacent enough about being lead outside—he obviously stopped for his outerwear—but once our perpetrator’s intentions became clear, he would have tried to fight back.  However, by that time it was too late.  Whatever he was drugged with had done its work, and he was helpless to prevent his own blood-letting.”
> 
>  
> 
> Sherlock caught John’s eye as he gently touched the tip of one leather-clad finger to the wound, collecting a smear of tacky, mostly-congealed blood.  John made no attempt to conceal his morbid fascination as Sherlock lifted the finger to his mouth for a taste.  As it always did, John’s gaze flicked to the bit of fang which automatically descended.   Even from the very first, John had watched Sherlock’s occasional indulgence of his baser, non-human instincts with closer interest than was strictly prudent for a human.  Admittedly, this was one of the many reasons why Sherlock liked John.
> 
>  
> 
> The taste on his tongue was foul, and Sherlock grimaced.  “Definitely drugged.  Run a toxicology screen,” he suggested as Anderson hovered annoyingly, waiting for them to vacate the scene and looking a bit green. 
> 
>  
> 
> “So if we’re not looking at a vampire attack, we’re looking for, what?  A human who wants to be vampire?” Lestrade speculated.  “Or one who hates vampires enough to try a sloppy frame job?  A Satanic cult, maybe, as part of a ritual, or a blood-sacrifice?”  He looked down at the body with a sigh.  “Poor sod.”
> 
>  
> 
> “Satanic cult?”  Sherlock scoffed.  “Traditional Satanists, whether Theistic or Atheistic, are hardly the blood-letting, Devil-summoning bunch the media has gleefully and inaccurately popularized since the 1960s.  Unless you’re trying to suggest this murder was the work of an initiate of the Order of Nine Angels, in which case you’re dating yourself, Lestrade.  I’ll remind you that while there may still exist factions in some of the more rural, outlying areas of the country, vampires had successfully driven Order practitioners from the Greater London area by 1982.”
> 
>  
> 
> Sherlock cast his eye thoughtfully over the alley one last time.  “Forensics can finish processing the scene,” he said, standing from his crouch over the victim.  “Have someone let us know as soon as the body is moved to Bart’s morgue.”

 ~  
  


> “ _Sherlock_.”
> 
>  
> 
> “What?” he demanded, his eyes fixed on the computer monitor.  “Do you want me to squint through hours of poorly lit security footage, or do you want me to pay attention to whatever irrelevant prattle you’re spouting over there about football or the like?” 
> 
>  
> 
> Sherlock would have much rather been the one checking emails while John suffered through IT’s loathsomely slow computer system, but according to John they had done it that way round for the past two months.  Tedious.
> 
>  
> 
> “Not football.  Rugby.  As in how I know ‘Big Bob’ Ferguson.  The one who sent us the email about his vampire wife who you claim isn’t vampire.”
> 
>  
> 
> “That’s because she _isn’t_ ,” Sherlock groused, hunching further over the keyboard. 
> 
>  
> 
> “I dunno,” John mused, re-reading the email on his phone.  “Might be.  Caught hovering over the baby, puncture wounds to the neck, having suddenly become paranoid, erratic, and physically abusive of the older daughter...  Family history of occultism, apparently.”
> 
>  
> 
> Sherlock sighed.  Painfully.  “The wife isn’t vampire.  Leaving aside just how highly unrealistic it would be for one of my kind to form a long-term monogamous relationship with a human while expecting to successfully keep his or her biology secret—especially were that union to result in a child, which is extremely unlikely—vampires are no less devoted parents than their human counterparts.  _More_ devoted, I would say, as they’re setting themselves up for a lifetime investment of hundreds of years, rather than your species’ paltry average of eighteen or so, and our physiology is such that there is no such thing as _accidental_ pregnancy.  No, if you ask me, the whole thing is a matter better handled by a social worker.” 

 

“No,” John interrupted, “No, you definitely did not.”

 

“Didn’t what?” Sherlock asked, irritated at being stopped yet again.  “Am I giving this account, or are you?”

 

“You are,” John told him, “but I don’t know why you’re bothering, if you can’t even be honest about it.”

 

“I’m not lying.  You were there, and—”

 

“Yes, I was there, and you did not explain all that to me about...” John made a vague, encompassing gesture.  “Vampire mixed families.  You said she wasn’t vampire, no explanation given, and then jumped straight to the bit about social workers.”

 

Sherlock opened his mouth to argue, then paused.  “Didn’t I?”  John stared back, stonily.  “Ah, well, I was sure I had done, at some point.  It is possible you weren’t present for this conversation, I’ll admit.” 

 

John’s face continued to make ever-more dubious contortions.

 

“Well it hardly matters _when_ I told you, the point is that I _thought_ I’d told you, and we’ll have to explain that bit to Lestrade anyway.”

 

“The point is, you berk, that you don’t tell me things, and then go ahead and assume my knowledge of them.  That’s how you’re always getting yourself in trouble, you know.  And making me look like a tit while you’re at it, when I’ve got to account for our actions after the fact, and all I can say is ‘I dunno, Sherlock said so!’”

 

“Well it’s not like I do it on purpose!” Sherlock defended himself.  “The talking-to-you-when-you’re-not-there bit.  I’ll try not to do it in future,” he offered, though he didn’t think he was convincing either of them.  “...Am I allowed to continue?”

 

John favoured Sherlock with an unimpressed look before he turned back to his laptop.

 

> Sherlock sighed.  “The wife isn’t vampire,” he told John.  Then, a few moments later: “No, if you ask me, the whole thing is a matter better handled by a social worker.” 
> 
>  
> 
> Might have been Wexley, there, at the far edge of the frame, near the north end of the bar.  Sherlock slowed the footage to real-time, to see if he would reposition himself at a better angle for positive identification.
> 
>  
> 
> “You’re that sure simply from an email, then?” John needled him.  “She’s not vampire, not trying to, I don’t know, turn the baby from, what’s the word, Dampir into a fully-fledged vampire?”
> 
>  
> 
> “ _Dhampir_ ,” Sherlock corrected absently as his person of possible interest continued to dither at the edge of the frame, talking with a male much too large in stature to be their suspect.  “Turning halflings is something left until they have become self-sufficient adults—on rare occasion older children, if there has been some accident which requires it, or sometimes during political upheaval, but never infants, no.  They would almost certainly not survive the transformation.  Even if they did survive, hundreds of years as an infant would be a torture I can’t imagine any parent willingly inflicting upon their child.”
> 
>  
> 
> “All the more reason to check into it, don’t you think?” John asked carefully in a tone of voice that was less ‘idle suggestion’ than ‘decision made.’  Sherlock privately referred to it as John’s Captain Voice, because it always worked on Sherlock, and John knew it.  What John didn’t know was that it only worked because Sherlock allowed it in the interest of parity, and out of a vague guilt at the fact that John was so ridiculously easy to glamour into doing what Sherlock wanted. 
> 
>  
> 
> “Ugh, _fine_ ,” Sherlock muttered with exaggerated disgust.  He resumed 4x speed whilst behind him, John painstakingly finger-tapped a response to Ferguson.  John’s text alert sounded a moment later.
> 
>  
> 
> There was something said to the effect that Wexley’s family had proved useless, and something else about keeping Lestrade informed on what they found when they visited Wexley’s flat, themselves.  Frankly, Sherlock had tuned John out by this point.
> 
>  
> 
> “There!” Sherlock exclaimed, as Wexley left the bar and headed for the exit with a woman who had approached and appeared to talk to him for all of ten minutes before leading him away.  So either Wexley knew her, or had a definite ‘type.’  Dark skin, long dark hair, only a couple inches shorter than Wexley but impossible to tell for certain, as she may have been wearing heels. 
> 
>  
> 
> John got up to stand at Sherlock’s shoulder as he paused and zoomed in on the grainy image. 
> 
>  
> 
> “In the red dress?  What’s the time stamp, so we can verify on exterior CCTV?”
> 
>  
> 
> Sherlock glanced to the corner of the screen.  “01:35.” 
> 
>  
> 
> John disappeared briefly before returning with a disgruntled IT tech. 
> 
>  
> 
> The tech glared at Sherlock as she reclaimed her desk to grudgingly access the server.  Before Sherlock could admonish her against taking the news of her significant other’s infidelity out on her colleagues, John grabbed the back of Sherlock’s chair and spun him around to hold his phone in front of Sherlock’s face.
> 
>  
> 
> “When do I tell Bob we’re stopping by?”

~  
  


> Sherlock tugged idly at his scarf as John lifted his arm to knock on Ferguson’s front door.
> 
>  
> 
> “Don’t see why I’m the one who has to play Human-Other Relations Liaison for the Commonwealth,” he muttered. “If I’d wanted a job in government, I’d have followed Mycroft into government, as he so desperately wanted.”

 

“Hold on,” John protested. “Sherlock, you can’t just skip over the entire portion of the investigation that took place at Wexley’s flat.”

 

“Well we won’t be skipping over it in the report, obviously. But you were there, I was there, investigation of Wexley’s living conditions and internet history made glaringly evident his obsession with the literal _femme fatale_ —”

 

> They both stared in awkward silence at the wall above Wexley’s bed.
> 
>  
> 
> “Huh,” John finally spoke up.  “Big fan of Irene Adler, then.”
> 
>  
> 
> “Yes, well, he would be, seeing as all those fetish websites he has bookmarked are full of human women wearing too much stage makeup, while Miss Adler is the one and only ‘Real Deal.’” 
> 
>  
> 
> Several more seconds passed.  John was still staring.  Sherlock turned to glare at him.

 

“—which was just about the only thing of any worth the flatmate was able to confirm—”

 

> Boring Ronnie with the boring spectacles and the boring five-quid haircut shook his head.
> 
>  
> 
> “Man, I dunno. Sean and I got along well enough, yeah, and I went out with him to the clubs once, not long after I moved in, but once was enough, if you know what I mean. He’s into that S&M, bloodplay and Vamps fetishism shite, _no thank you_. So around ten last night, when he said something about going out, I didn’t ask any questions.”

 

“—and which was otherwise an unbearably tedious experience that I have a hard time genuinely believing you want me to recount for us in excruciating detail.”

 

“Yes, all right, I get it,” John assured him, exasperated. “Back to Ferguson, then.”

 

> The door opened to a harried-looking man in his mid-forties, African-English descent, close to 190 cm and at least 17 stone.  “Big Bob,” indeed.
> 
>  
> 
> “Oh, thank god,” Ferguson sighed, standing aside to usher them in.  “John.  Mr Holmes.”  He shook each of their hands in turn.  As he made to release Sherlock’s hand, Sherlock held on, twisting Ferguson’s grip just enough to better expose the small, bluish-purple stain on the cuff of his white dress shirt.
> 
>  
> 
> “Oh.”  Ferguson tutted.  “Didn’t notice that, work was a bit of a mess today, and obviously my mind’s been elsewhere.  Colloidal gold,” he offered, rubbing ineffectually at the spot with his thumb when Sherlock released his grip. 
> 
>  
> 
> “Electron microscopy?” Sherlock hazarded.  “Are you a molecular biologist, by chance, Mr Ferguson?”
> 
>  
> 
> “Botanist.  But please, come in.”

 

“...What?” Sherlock demanded, suddenly noticing the way John was watching him, chin propped on one fist. “What’s that look?”

 

“You refuse to rehash our visit to Wexley’s flat as a waste of time, yet here you are, repeating the conversation with Bob Ferguson before we’d even got foot in his door.”

 

“I assure you it’s relevant,” Sherlock sniffed.

 

> Once inside, Sherlock let John handle the tedious small talk (honestly, hadn’t the long-winded email been comprehensive enough?) whilst he himself got down to the task of observation.
> 
>  
> 
> Well-kept home, but showing evidence of several days’ neglect: dried water-rings and a thin layer of dust on the coffee table, faint tracking of dirt on the hall rug, infant paraphernalia scattered everywhere.  Not much evidence of a teenaged daughter, unless one counted the video game console haphazardly shoved in beside the entertainment centre and the single trainer with purple laces kicked under the kitchen table.
> 
>  
> 
> Most interesting, though, was the sitting room décor and its decidedly arcane influences.  A low bookshelf against one wall held volumes like _The Practical Occultist’s Almanac_ , _An Abridged Encyclopedia of the Supernatural_ , and _Gods, Monsters, and Ghosts: How Man’s Fear Shaped This World and the Next_.
> 
>  
> 
> A wide glass bowl atop the bookshelf held a few sprigs of what proved upon closer examination to be sage.  Propped up against the fireplace mantle were several artifacts with which Sherlock was passingly familiar.  A wooden ‘spirit needle’ approximately the width of his hand, a crudely-constructed gris-gris figure, a small iron box inlaid with silver in the shape of a pentagram. 
> 
>  
> 
> Lining the walls were several black-and-white photographs depicting a mix of stark natural landscapes, and extreme close-ups of human bodies painted with pseudo-religious iconography, much of it vaguely similar to something Sherlock thought he might have seen decades ago in Peru.  An overwrought attempt at an “artistic” aesthetic, in Sherlock’s opinion. 
> 
>  
> 
> “Anna,” Ferguson said suddenly.
> 
>  
> 
> Sherlock turned to see Mrs Ferguson standing in the entryway to the rest of the house.  American in features, pale-skinned with dyed auburn hair and tall for a woman—taller than John—wearing an expression which hovered, oddly, somewhere between distrust and relief.
> 
>  
> 
> “You must be the Vampire Detective,” she addressed Sherlock stiffly.  “Come to pass judgment on my fitness as a mother?”
> 
>  
> 
> “Anna...”
> 
>  
> 
> “Of course not,” Sherlock replied.  “You’re not vampire, so if indeed anyone _is_ feeding from your son, it’s not you.”
> 
>  
> 
> Mrs Ferguson flinched so briefly, Sherlock might have missed it if he hadn’t been watching for it.  She recovered quickly, however, and turned a wordless, baleful look on her husband.  Sherlock found it unsettlingly reminiscent of the one John sent his way whenever he drove a witness to tears with what John deemed “unnecessary scare tactics.” 
> 
>  
> 
> “If you’d be so kind as to show me where Freddy sleeps?” Sherlock inquired. 
> 
>  
> 
> Mrs Ferguson reluctantly gestured for Sherlock to follow her.  Sherlock peered over his shoulder to catch John’s eye, glancing pointedly at the trainer under the kitchen table.
> 
>  
> 
> “Uh, but Jackie’s able to lead a fairly normal life, I hope?” he heard John begin leadingly, as he made his way down the hallway.
> 
>  
> 
> In the nursery was Freddy, naked but for a nappy, standing in his cot to greet them.  “Uh!” he ordered, thrusting his arms skyward.  Anna obliged, bending to pick him up and set him on her hip.
> 
>  
> 
> “Freddy, this is Mr Sherlock Holmes.  He’s friends with Daddy’s friend.  Daddy invited him to make sure you’re okay, even though Mommy told Daddy that Freddy is fine.  Aren’t you, Freddy?”  Anna smoothed a hand over the boy’s head. 
> 
>  
> 
> “Fuh,” Freddy agreed, or maybe he was just repeating phonemes at random.  Sherlock did so have difficulty remembering what human children were and were not capable of, and at what ages.
> 
>  
> 
> “If I may?” Sherlock asked, holding out his arms.
> 
>  
> 
> Freddy observed Sherlock with uncharacteristic solemnity for an infant as his mother carefully handed him over, and Sherlock could only approve.  Human infants, creatures of helpless instinct that they were, tended to be much more perceptive to the aura of Other than were adults. 
> 
>  
> 
> Gripping the child gently under his armpits, Sherlock raised him until he was level with his own face.  “Hello, Freddy.”  Freddy kicked his feet and grunted in response. 
> 
>  
> 
> Sherlock carefully turned him this way and that, but the only injury he could find was a bit of scabbing on the neck from what appeared to have been two small puncture wounds, one left of and slightly above the other, approximately three and a half or four centimetres between them. 
> 
>  
> 
> “And when did he present with these injuries, again?” Sherlock asked curiously.
> 
>  
> 
> Anna crossed her arms over her chest, her eyes never leaving her son.  “Those, in particular?  About three days ago.  I told Bob it was nothing.  Once they start to crawl, babies get into everything.  Bound to get a few scrapes and bruises here and there along the way.”
> 
>  
> 
> “Hmm,” Sherlock responded thoughtfully.  “And was it also ‘nothing’ that had you raising your hand against your step-daughter?”
> 
>  
> 
> Anna blanched, then flushed hotly in quick succession.  “I didn’t mean to do that.  The last thing I’d want to do is abuse the poor girl, on top of everything else.” 
> 
>  
> 
> Sherlock lifted an eyebrow. 
> 
>  
> 
> “Jackie’s disabled,” Anna explained.  “Bob said her mother was quite sick during the pregnancy, and Jackie was born with a twisted spine.  Surgery wasn’t able to completely fix it, and it gives her a bit of trouble.  She’s not got a lot of friends, spends most of her time at home on the internet, unsurprisingly.”  Anna’s lips twisted in an unhappy smile. 
> 
>  
> 
> “She just...sassed me something awful, said some horrible things, you know how teenagers can be, and I...lost my temper.  I’ve made sure Jackie knows it won’t happen again, but she’s never been particularly fond of me since the day she met me, and I can’t say that this has helped any.”  Clearing her throat uncomfortably, Anna reached for Freddy.
> 
>  
> 
> “Good-bye, little man,” Sherlock told him as he handed him back to his mother.  “You have made a strange start in life.” 
> 
>  
> 
> Exiting the nursery, Sherlock bumped into John in the hall.
> 
>  
> 
> “Well?”
> 
>  
> 
> John rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, something Sherlock had noticed John did whenever he felt guilty about what he’d done; in this case, poke through a fifteen-year-old girl’s belongings outside of an official criminal investigation. 
> 
>  
> 
> “No pictures of friends, for one thing.  Just photos of her and Bob, and one with her mother, in which she’s pretty young.  Typical teenage band and film posters on the walls.  No contraband that I could find with a quick sweep, but definitely far too many fussy little containers of makeup.  Jackie doesn’t save her internet history, but the only pages she has bookmarked are an email server, online shopping, a couple social media sites, and about a dozen fan sites and forums on vampires.  How to recognize them, how to attract them, how to ‘train your body toward the next step in evolution.’”
> 
>  
> 
> “Surprising.”
> 
>  
> 
> “What?  That she thinks she wants to be vampire?”
> 
>  
> 
> “Hmm?  Oh, no, that part’s fairly obvious.  Has an unhealthy fixation with vampires and vampire lore, likely due to her weak physiology and the ridiculous myth of vampiric perfection, exacerbated by her sense of isolation from her peers and nurtured by the step-mother’s more outré spiritual beliefs.  Jackie’s the one who injured little Freddy, most likely in the hopes that she could benefit from his exuberant youth and vitality through a sort of sympathetic magic by ingesting his blood.” 
> 
>  
> 
> John opened his mouth with the beginnings of an inquisitive noise, but Sherlock spoke right over him in the interest of time.
> 
>  
> 
> “Anna must have caught her in the act, thus the unprecedented physical abuse, but couldn’t bear to tell her husband about it—only child, born disabled after a difficult pregnancy, mother died not long afterward.  Jackie is very much Daddy’s Girl.  Anna was likely hoping discovery and confrontation would be enough to prevent it from happening again, but it’s the uncertainty that’s made her ‘paranoid and erratic.’  Should probably get their daughter to pick up some more socially acceptable hobbies, something with a little physical activity and some fresh air wouldn’t be amiss. 
> 
>  
> 
> “No,” Sherlock clarified, “I meant it’s surprising that you were actually able to crack Jackie’s computer password.  Of course there was always the possibility of her having used a seemingly random string of letters and numbers, particularly if she was participating in secretive behaviors online, but it seems not.  Good work, John.  Now shall I explain to Mr Ferguson that one of his children was “playing vampire” with the other and his wife knew, or would you prefer to do it?  Whichever it is, we’d better make it quick, as I’ve just gotten a text from Molly.”

 

“Sherlock. The stain on Bob’s shirt cuff? What’s the significance?”

 

A pleased smirk tugged at the corner of Sherlock’s mouth. “I’m getting to it.”

 

> Molly flung back the sheet, exposing the body of Sean Wexley from the waist up.
> 
> “It was blood loss that killed him,” Molly confirmed.  “Aside from the defensive wounds and the bite to the jugular, there weren’t any other wounds.”  She indicated the neck with one gloved finger.  “Dentition’s not really my area of expertise, but based on the distance between the possible fang punctures and the spread of the, er...gnaw-y bit, you’re looking for someone whose mouth is rather small.  The murderer clamped down quite hard, you can tell by the depth of the bruising, using what looks to be the whole mouth—you can see at either end of the impression, here and here, that the back teeth really dug in, um, as if the person was using them to anchor the flesh in place.  It’s just not something a Vampire would do...though I don’t suppose I have to tell you two that.” 
> 
> Molly gave an awkward laugh, pushing a strand of hair from her face with her wrist.  Sherlock stared at her until she continued.
> 
> “Anyhow, the strange thing is that if you count the teeth marks, you’ve got the, well, obvious canines, then the first pre-molar, second pre-molar, but only one set of molars on either side.  Which could just mean the person who did this wasn’t able to open their mouth any wider, but...”  Molly paused, seeming flustered.  “But with impressions that deep at the terminal edges of the wound, it _might_ indicate that those first molars were the last teeth in the mouth.  Otherwise, I’d expect to see _some_ sign of the second molars, even if it’s just a partial imprint or additional bruising.”
> 
> Sherlock frowned, running his eye carefully over the body yet again, attempting to fit this new information into the likeliest narrative for Sean Wexley’s murder.
> 
> “Don’t the second molars usually erupt fairly early, though?” John asked. 
> 
> “Usually around prepubescence, I think, yeah,” Molly agreed, wringing her hands unconsciously.  “It’s not uncommon in human adults for the third molars to erupt only partially or not at all, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard of the second set missing, as well.”  She glanced between the two of them.
> 
> “You’re saying a _preteen girl_ did this?” John asked incredulously, once the implication became clear.  He turned to Sherlock.  “Our woman in red lured Wexley out of the club so a _kid_ could drink his blood?”
> 
> Scowling, Sherlock waved him off as he tried to think.  “That doesn’t make _sense_ ,” he muttered.  “What about the toxicology screen?  What was he dosed with?”
> 
> “Oh!”  Molly shuffled papers on the lab bench until she found a particular sheet of paper and handed it to Sherlock.  “Not complete, yet, but based on the information you texted me this morning, I ran tests for the most common recreational drugs and sedatives, and I think I found what you were looking for.”
> 
> “Chloral hydrate?” Sherlock read off the report, his mind racing.  Why would...  He turned to Molly and leaned in to give her a sniff, but that wasn’t right, and he swung around to John as the pieces suddenly fell into place.  Sherlock grabbed John’s hand, pulling it toward his face and inhaling deeply.  On the palm, yes, but more concentrated on the first two fingertips and thumb, oh, _oh!_ _Of course!_

 

“All right, yes, good on you, brilliant work, but _how_ did you figure it out?  What was pointing out the stain on Bob’s cuff all about, or the sniffing, for that matter?”

 

Sherlock grinned, clearly enjoying himself.  The reveal was his favorite part.  After, of course, forcing the rest of them to stumble about in the dark for a bit.

 

“Come now, John, you were there for the whole thing.  You know my methods, and certainly your years with Special Investigation Branch as a moderately successful detective, yourself, give you an advantage over lazy, uncreative minds like DI Lestrade’s.”

 

John leaned back in his chair to cross his arms over his chest.  Sometimes he wondered if Sherlock ever stopped to actually listen to the words coming out of his own mouth.

 

“If you think I’ve withheld anything in my account absolutely crucial for the solution of the case, I invite you to tell me your version of it.”  Sherlock gazed back at John expectantly.

 

“Withheld anything aside from all the boring yet indispensable procedural work I was doing while you were tasting corpses and texting hobos, you mean?”

 

Sherlock spread his hands in a gesture which seemed to concede the point.  “If you’ve anything significant to add for Lestrade’s benefit...”

 

“It hardly matters, if you’re planning for us to lie to Lestrade about the whole thing, anyway,” John pointed out.    

 

“For your own benefit, then,” Sherlock suggested.

 

“Oh ho, for my benefit, really?” John retorted.  “Yeah, all right.  There were a few things you left out.  One or two bits it might be a good idea to include in the report.  For my benefit.”

 

* * *

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

> John entered the bullpen with two cups of tea from the café down the street, the one that carried the nearly impossible to find glucose-based sweetener designed specifically for vampire metabolism.  A sweetener which John strongly suspected they carried solely for Sherlock, in the first place.
> 
>  
> 
> He found Sherlock already at his own desk, a veritable explosion of papers and photos scattered over the surface. 
> 
>  
> 
> “Morning.  What’s this, then?” he asked, setting Sherlock’s tea at his elbow so he could catch a glimpse of Sherlock’s computer screen.
> 
>  
> 
> “Email from an aspiring client, came through the website this morning, thinks his wife is vampire and drinking from their infant son or some such nonsense.  That’s not interesting.” 
> 
>  
> 
> Sherlock stood and shrugged on his coat with a manic glint in his eye.  “What’s interesting is the call Lestrade just got about a body found behind the vampire-friendly Club Tepes.  Puncture wounds on the neck, reportedly exsanguinated, but we’ll be the judge of that, since it obviously wasn’t done by a vampire.” 
> 
>  
> 
> Sherlock reached absently for his tea without bothering to acknowledge the fact that it hadn’t simply appeared out of thin air, then clamped a large hand on John’s shoulder.  “If we hurry, we can get there before Forensics shows up to muck everything up,” he added, physically shoving John back in the direction from which he’d just come.
> 
>  
> 
> “Why ‘obviously’ not a vampire?” John asked.  Being Major Investigation Team, and Sherlock being who he was, meant they were essentially tasked with every even remotely vampire-related incident in the borough.  The upshot of this being, Sherlock usually complained a lot more than this.

 

“I do not.  This is slander.”

 

“It’ll be libel, once I write it up.” 

 

> “You haven’t even seen the body yet,” John pointed out.
> 
>  
> 
> “The club employee who called it in reported that the body was a ‘bloody mess.’  A bit strange, don’t you think, seeing as the point of attacking an unwilling human is generally to drink their blood, not smear it around, and certainly not to leave evidence of it.”
> 
>  
> 
> John stepped gamely into the lift, despite having only stepped out of it two minutes earlier.  “So you’re saying someone wanted to make it look like a vampire attack, probably attempting to either frame or emulate someone else, but he did a piss-poor job of it?”  John shook his head.  “That’s a dangerous game to play.  Why would someone want to stir up trouble like that?”
> 
>  
> 
> Sherlock grinned.  A bit madly, for this early in the morning, John thought. 
> 
>  
> 
> “That’s what I want to know.”

 ~

 

> Sherlock stood over the body as uniformed officers secured the scene at the mouth of the alley.
> 
> “Sometimes I despair of the deteriorating intelligence of the human race,” Sherlock announced to everyone present.
> 
> “Sherlock,” John said warningly from where he was trying to finish with Luke Greene, employee of Club Tepes.  Greene was the one who’d had the misfortune of finding the body as he arrived early this morning.
> 
> “Right,” John told Greene, “you’ve been helpful, thank you.”  Which wasn’t strictly true, but unlike Sherlock, John made a point of not insulting or antagonising every potential source of information in their work.  Speaking of...
> 
> “Who in their right mind could possibly think this would be mistaken for the work of a vampire?” Sherlock continued, stridently.  He clearly missed the disgruntled looks that more than one police officer threw his way.
> 
> John caught his eye and shook his head briefly, to let Sherlock know he hadn’t gained anything particularly useful.  He turned back to Greene.  “Do you have the number for someone I can talk to about getting access to the security footage?”
> 
> “Oh, yeah, gimme a second...”  Greene pulled out his phone to scroll through his contacts.
> 
> Finally dismissing the man, John turned to Sherlock.  “All right then.  What do you think?” he asked, knowing this was what Sherlock had been waiting for.
> 
> “Signs of a struggle.”  Sherlock knelt eagerly and tugged up the sleeve of their victim’s coat, pointed to the faint bruising and shallow scratches.  “Which, again, wouldn’t be present if indeed a vampire had done this,” he muttered, smug.  Sherlock gestured to the bloody mess that had been made of the neck.  “Not to mention the wounds to the throat are positioned more laterally than medially—”
> 
> “Over the jug and not the carotid, yeah,” John agreed.  “Not to mention all the...gnawing.”
> 
> “Excessive peri-mortem bruising,” Sherlock added.  “Too much blood on his scarf to suggest that whomever did this had any sort of practice at it.”
> 
> John pulled a pair of nitrile gloves from the pocket of his coat so he could inspect a bit more closely before Forensics and Anderson showed up, sending Sherlock into an apoplectic fit of temper. 
> 
> The crunch of gravel had John glancing up to see Lestrade approach.
> 
> “What have you got for me?” Lestrade wanted to know.  John let Sherlock field that one as he carefully manipulated the body.
> 
> No obvious sign of needle puncture at the juncture of neck and shoulder, or along the hairline.  Sniffing near the mouth, John thought he detected alcohol, no vomit, but it was difficult to be absolutely certain with the ferric odour of the fatal wound so close.
> 
> “Not a vampire,” Sherlock informed him snidely.  “So you can put that thought right out of your head.”
> 
> Lestrade scratched his chin and attempted to get a commiserating look out of John, but John only shrugged.  Just because Sherlock was right about it didn’t mean he was going to be any less of an arse.

“Oh, there’s something crucial to include in your account of the case: Sherlock is an arse.”

 

> John tuned out of the conversation as two, then three grown, professional men devolved into bickering schoolboys.
> 
>  
> 
> The body was quite pale, nearly white, indicating massive blood loss.  Yet, while there was a fair bit spilled down Wexley’s front and pooled beneath him, Lestrade was right.  There wasn’t nearly enough blood for the victim to have bled out.  Pushing up the hem of Wexley’s shirt, John could see faint evidence of livor mortis along the lowest points of the body.  The scattering of wounds on the underside of Wexley’s arms were bruises, none of them very vivid, and a few scratches that looked to have been done with fingernails rather than any kind of weapon.  However, the dimensions of the bite wound suggested an assailant significantly smaller than the victim.  So unless he or she did possess inhuman strength, they had likely had help, whether in the form of an accomplice or a cocktail of drugs.
> 
>  
> 
> John heard Anderson repeat the urban myth about a person being able to swallow a pint of blood, trying to use this to argue against Sherlock’s claim that their killer was human, and decided he’d better step in before they had a second corpse.
> 
>  
> 
> “Not dry,” John told them, “just mostly.”  He tugged up Wexley’s shirt a little more so they could all see the bruising caused by the settling of what blood remained in the body after death. 
> 
>  
> 
> “There’s not any definitive medical research on the subject,” John continued, mostly for Anderson’s benefit, “but if our murderer suffers from an Identity Disorder in which he or she actually believes they’re vampire, or from Renfield Syndrome, it’s possible they may have worked at building up a tolerance.  She, probably, would have started by ingesting her own blood, then moved on to bagged blood, if she knew someone who could get it for her, until she felt either prepared or compelled to take on another human being.”
> 
>  
> 
> “The average adult circulates eight to twelve pints of blood,” Sherlock said.  “Mr Wexley here looks to be toward the middle of that range, so: approximately ten pints.  He’s clearly lost one all down his scarf, was left with enough to show faint signs of livor mortis despite the low temperatures overnight, so let’s say three pints still _in situ_.  Which leaves us with close to six, perhaps seven pints unaccounted for.  However, unless near-starved for months, or in the altered psychological state humans have so charmingly labeled ‘Blood Lust,’ a vampire would have as difficult a time draining a human, entire, as a human would have consuming their own weight in meat.”
> 
>  
> 
> Anderson crossed his arms mulishly.  “So if our murderer didn’t drink the blood, what did he do with it?”
> 
>  
> 
> Sherlock’s eyes flashed.
> 
>  
> 
> “Obviously she—look at the size of the dental arcade, why don’t you, and the faint hint of a woman’s floral perfume still lingers at the victim’s shoulder and neck—would have had to bring with her a method for collection and temporary storage, which isn’t unheard of as science continues to advance in the interests of quicker and more convenient blood donation.  With the head flung back like this, she could have held some manner of collection container below the incision. 
> 
>  
> 
> “But panic would have meant our victim was struggling for his life, and would have resulted in a much larger mess than we’re already seeing here.  So: faint evidence of defensive wounds against a smaller, likely weaker opponent, yet little to no struggle when it came to the killing blow.  Victim was likely drugged with a moderately quick-acting sedative.  Slipped into his drink inside the club, then, as it started to take effect, our killer coerced him outside, possibly with the invitation to ‘go back to hers,’ or maybe simply a quick tryst in the alley.  The victim was complacent enough about being lead outside—he obviously stopped for his outerwear—but once our perpetrator’s intentions became clear, he would have tried to fight back.  However, by that time it was too late.  Whatever he was drugged with had done its work, and he was helpless to prevent his own blood-letting.”
> 
>  
> 
> Sherlock sought out John’s gaze on the word ‘helpless,’ and like he was playing to a fucking script, John found himself unable to look away.  Sherlock dipped his middle finger into the wound, then brought that same finger to his mouth where he licked at it delicately, rolled his tongue in his mouth to really get the taste of it.  _Jesus_.
> 
>  
> 
> Sherlock broke that unnerving stare of his to wrinkle his nose.  “Definitely drugged.  Run a toxicology screen on what’s left of the blood,” Sherlock ordered. 
> 
>  
> 
> “So if we’re not looking at a vampire attack, we’re looking for, what?  A human who wants to be vampire?” Lestrade speculated.  “Or one who hates vampires enough to try a sloppy frame job?  A Satanic cult, maybe, as part of a ritual, or a blood-sacrifice?”  He looked down at the body with a sigh.  “Poor sod.”
> 
>  
> 
> Sherlock scoffed, offering up a brief history in Satanism in the UK as a way to tell Lestrade he was, essentially, so wrong as to be ridiculous, then followed that up with a jab about Lestrade’s age—which was rich, coming from someone a couple hundred years old himself.
> 
>  
> 
> Sherlock cast a proprietary eye over the area one last time.  “Forensics can finish processing the scene,” he said magnanimously, before unfolding from his crouch beside the victim.  “Have someone let us know as soon as the body is moved to Bart’s morgue.”
> 
>  
> 
> “Please,” John added, since Sherlock obviously wasn’t going to.  With a sigh of his own he stood to face Lestrade.  “I’ve got the manager’s info.  We’ll have to ask him to hand over their security footage from last night.”  John ripped the page out of his notepad and handed it over.  “Once we find Wexley on the interior footage, we’ll have an idea of what time frame we might need for CCTV footage.”
> 
>  
> 
> “Come along, John!” Sherlock called impatiently from the edge of the police barricade. 
> 
>  
> 
> John took in their DI’s harried, sleepless look, and wondered if it meant his divorce was finally going through.  “I think Sherlock and I have this one pretty well under control, Greg,” John told him.  “We just need the order to hand over the tapes to come from you, then we can go over them ourselves.  Let us know whether the family have any information that could potentially prove helpful to the investigation, once you’ve talked to them, and we’ll follow up.  Either way, Sherlock and I will go check out Wexley’s home address.”
> 
>  
> 
> “Thanks, John.”  Lestrade dragged a hand through his hair, the pinched look about his eyes easing somewhat.  “Can’t remember what it was like dealing with Himself before you came along.”  He nodded in Sherlock’s direction. 
> 
>  
> 
> At John’s lifted eyebrows, Lestrade laughed outright.
> 
>  
> 
> “All right, I _can_ remember, I just don’t want to.”  He sent John off with a hand clapped to his back.  “I’ll keep you updated.”

 

“Do I really have to sit here and listen to what a saint everyone apparently thinks you are for martyring yourself to the cause of ‘Freaky Holmes’?” Sherlock grumbled, picking at an imaginary thread on the cuff of his dressing gown. 

 

John stopped short.

 

“I’m not...  I’m not trying to make you feel bad,” John said.  “I just thought you’d want to know what Greg and I talked about, since it was about you, and, well.  Sometimes I can feel a bit...extraneous at a crime scene, what with the way you’re able to take in everything so quickly, your mind jumping ahead until you’re ten steps in front of the rest of us.  I suppose it’s just nice to know I—”  John paused, uncertain how to finish that sentence in a way that didn’t sound pathetic, or like he was fishing for validation.

 

Sherlock snorted.  “Don’t be absurd, John.  You’re a competent investigator in your own right, an invaluable source of insight into the human psyche.  The fact that you even _try_ to keep up with me, that’s...  That’s, um, good.  ...Isn’t it?  For everyone involved?” he demanded with a frown, not quite looking at John. 

 

John watched Sherlock avoid his gaze for another several moments. 

 

“All right then,” John offered, his tongue darting out to wet his lips.  “Just so as we agree that neither of us is anyone’s charity case.”

 

“Certainly not.”

 

“Okay, good.”

 

“Good,” Sherlock repeated.

 

John cleared his throat awkwardly.  “Anyway...the email from Bob Ferguson.  One you seem determined to ignore.”

 

Sherlock rolled his eyes, but John carried on, a bit more emphatically.

 

“But which we’re going to have to explain to Lestrade, because it’s our _only tangible link_ between Wexley’s murder and what happened later.”

 

Sherlock flapped a hand at John dismissively.

 

John glared back.  “The _gist_ of the email was that five years ago, Bob Ferguson had remarried after the death of his first wife by an unspecified, lingering illness.  His new wife, Anna, came from a family of serious occultists, even if she was non-practicing, herself.  Bob’s daughter Jackie had problems accepting Anna as her new mother, but they seemed to find a common interest in Anna’s family history, and the related hoo-doo paraphernalia she’d saved out of sentiment.”

 

‘Hoo doo,’ Sherlock mouthed silently to himself, as if tasting the shape of the word on his tongue and disapproving. 

 

John continued, just to spite him.

 

“Anna gave birth to Freddy last year, and Jackie wasn’t too keen on having a brother, but Bob didn’t think it went beyond sibling jealousy.  Then two weeks ago, Freddy began presenting with unexplained injuries.  Anna started being secretive and paranoid, was possessive of Freddy and physically abusive toward Jackie, and Bob worried Anna might be vampire and hadn’t told him.”

 

Sherlock threw his head back with an overly-dramatic sigh to stare at the ceiling.  “Which is utterly asinine, as I told you.”

 

“Yeah, as you’ve told me _now_.”

  
  


> “Sherlock,” John said for the third time.
> 
>  
> 
> “What?” Sherlock finally responded without looking away from the computer screen.  “Do you want me to squint through hours of poorly lit security footage, or do you want me to pay attention to whatever irrelevancy you’re spouting over there about football or the like?” 
> 
>  
> 
> “Not football,” John corrected him.  “Rugby.  As in how I know ‘Big’ Bob Ferguson.  The one who sent us the email about his vampire wife who you claim isn’t a vampire.”
> 
>  
> 
> “That’s because she _isn’t_ ,” Sherlock insisted.
> 
>  
> 
> “I dunno,” John said, glancing back to his phone.  “Might be.  Caught hovering over the baby, puncture wounds to the neck, having suddenly become paranoid, erratic, and physically abusive of the older daughter...  Family history of occultism, apparently.”
> 
>  
> 
> Sherlock pulled a face at the computer screen.  “The wife isn’t vampire.”  He paused for so long, John was tempted to ask him if that was all he had to say about it.  Finally, Sherlock seemed to finish the thought.
> 
>  
> 
> “No, if you ask me, the whole thing is a matter better handled by a social worker.”  Sherlock clicked away with the computer mouse and fell silent. 
> 
>  
> 
> John tried again.  “You’re that sure simply from an email, then?  She’s not vampire, not trying to, I don’t know, turn the baby from, what’s the word, Dampir into a fully-fledged vampire?”
> 
>                                                          
> 
> “ _Dhampir_ ,” Sherlock replied, distracted.  He tapped at the keyboard.  “Turning halflings is something left until they have become self-sufficient adults—on rare occasion older children, if there has been some accident which requires it, or sometimes during political upheaval, but never infants, no.  They would almost certainly not survive the transformation.  Even if they did survive, hundreds of years as an infant would be a torture I can’t imagine any parent willingly inflicting upon their child.”
> 
>  
> 
> John was silent as he let that information sink in.  Dhampir were supposed to be extremely rare.  As it was, human/vampire interbreeding was strongly discouraged by vampires themselves; why risk it, when it would be much simpler to Turn a desired mate for oneself, first?  John shuddered to think what Sherlock knew that allowed him to speak so authoritatively on the topic.
> 
>  
> 
> “All the more reason to check into it, don’t you think?” John replied in the tone of voice he tended to use when he knew Sherlock wasn’t as opposed to something as he pretended, but only wanted to be convinced.  It wasn’t dissimilar, John had to admit, from the tone he would use with insubordinates back during his time in SIB. 
> 
>  
> 
> “Ugh, _fine_ ,” Sherlock muttered, not putting up nearly as much of a fight as John was prepared to expect.  John would have liked to think it was because Ferguson was an old friend, or maybe because there were children involved, but one never knew, with Sherlock. 
> 
>  
> 
> A series of texts come through on John’s phone while he’s starting a reply to Bob Ferguson.
> 
>  
> 
> “Lestrade says he informed the family, but they live in Lewes,” he read aloud to Sherlock.  “Hadn’t seen nor heard from Sean since winter hols, had never mentioned any particular friends regularly, wasn’t seeing anyone, as far as they knew.  Sounds like that’s a wash on that end, then.” 
> 
>  
> 
> John took a few moments to text a response, wishing the keyboard on this screen wasn’t so small.
> 
>  
> 
> “There!” Sherlock exclaimed, pointing to something on the computer monitor. 
> 
>  
> 
> John came over to stand beside Sherlock as he zoomed in on the grainy image. 
> 
>  
> 
> “In the red dress?” he asked.  “What’s the time stamp, so we can verify on exterior CCTV?”
> 
>  
> 
> “01:35.”
> 
>  
> 
> Stepping across the room, John took a deep breath to steel himself, then twisted the door handle and poked his head into the hall.
> 
>  
> 
> Ah.  Yep, there was the IT tech Sherlock had kicked out of her own office. 
> 
>  
> 
> John pasted on his most charming smile.  
>   
> 

 

“So we stopped by Wexley’s place, yes, and about the only useful information we got out of it was that he was a Vamp Tramp, yes,” John recounted, in brief. Sherlock’s upper lip curled disdainfully at the slang. “And since Bob Ferguson’s house was only a few streets away, we decided to stop by while we were in the area...”

 

> Sherlock fussed with his scarf as John knocked on the street door.
> 
>  
> 
> “Don’t see why I’m the one who has to play Human-Other Relations Liaison for the Commonwealth,” Sherlock complained.  “If I’d wanted a job in government, I’d have followed Mycroft into government, as he so desperately wanted.”
> 
>  
> 
> “No,” John returned under his breath, “you wanted a job in human law enforcement as a detective, with some private-client business on the side, so you could also take the really weird cases that people didn’t want to talk to the police about.”
> 
>  
> 
> “I’d gotten so very bored,” Sherlock mused.  “And Mycroft had reacted so explosively to the drugs last time, I figured the best revenge was to show him how easily I could fit myself into the strictest, most highly-accountable constraints of human infrastructure, should it suit my purposes to do so.  Of course, I regretted it almost immediately...”
> 
>  
> 
> John huffed a laugh.  “Lucky for you, then, that you met me.”
> 
>  
> 
> “Lucky?” Sherlock demanded.  “You took me into military custody!”
> 
>  
> 
> “Well you were trespassing on my case, weren’t you?”
> 
>  
> 
> “We had concurrent jurisdiction and you know it!”
> 
>  
> 
> “Didn’t know it then, did I?”
> 
>  
> 
> Sherlock’s face took on a fond, thoughtful cast.  “Mycroft was furious.”
> 
>  
> 
> “Not at me, at _you_ ,” John reminded him.  “For getting yourself caught, and then refusing to get yourself back out on your own, until you’d convinced me we were better off working the case together.”
> 
>  
> 
> Sherlock grinned. “Yes.”

 

“You’re not really going to tell Lestrade all this, are you?” Sherlock asked, bewildered.  “You’re one to talk about _relevant_ information.”

 

“Just trying to be thorough,” John informed him as he typed away at his laptop.  “It humanises you.”

 

Sherlock glowered at him. 

 

John suppressed a smirk.  “It personalises you,” he amended.

 

Sherlock’s expression remained unchanged.

 

“Anyway, that’s when the door opened.  We exchanged greetings, and you noticed the stain on Bob’s cuff.  Of which you still haven’t explained the significance.”

  
  


> “Electron microscopy?” Sherlock guessed, in that way of his which he insisted wasn’t guessing.  “Are you a molecular biologist, by chance, Mr Ferguson?”
> 
>  
> 
> “Botanist.  But please, come in.”
> 
>  
> 
> Once inside, Sherlock immediately ignored everyone in favour of heading straight for the sitting room to start poking through things. 
> 
>  
> 
> John turned to their client awkwardly.  To be honest, he hadn’t given Bob Ferguson of Richmond’s rugger team much thought since they both left school.  They’d been friendly enough, but never particularly close.  In fact, John was fairly certain the only person from those days he could even claim to know the current whereabouts of was Mike Stamford. 
> 
>  
> 
> “Shame we had to meet again like this, John, but I’d seen your name in the papers along with Sherlock Holmes, Vampire Detective, and I didn’t know where else to turn.”
> 
>  
> 
> Christ, he hoped Sherlock didn’t hear that, John thought.  Sherlock hated being called that almost as much as he hated the ‘funny hat’ bit.

 

“I have revised my opinion of Robert Ferguson’s intelligence accordingly.”

 

> “Anna refuses to even talk to me about it.  She insists Freddy is fine, that babies working themselves up from crawling to walking get into all kinds of things, despite your best efforts.”
> 
>  
> 
> “How’s Jackie?” John asked cautiously.  “You said in your email you caught Anna hurting her?”
> 
>  
> 
> “Walked in on the two of them a few days ago, yeah.  I saw Anna grab Jackie by the hair and throw her to the ground.”  Bob crossed his arms over his chest.  “Of course I was surprised.  I know Jackie can be a little trying, what with her...situation making it difficult for her to fit in with others her age, and being a teenager on top of that.  It seems like she’s angry and volatile all the time.  But Anna...  Before this, I’d have denied it was in her nature to ever lose her temper like that, much less raise a hand against Jackie.”
> 
>  
> 
> John hated to have to ask it, but: “Situation?”
> 
>  
> 
> “Vivian, her mother, had a difficult pregnancy.  Almost as soon as she found out, Vivi became sick.”
> 
>  
> 
> John vaguely remembered seeing Bob attached at the hip to a leggy, stick-thin girl with skin like coffee back in their rugby days.  Now that he thought about it, the name Vivi sounded familiar.
> 
>  
> 
> “The further along she got, the sicker she was, but the doctors assured us things were progressing normally.  When medication didn’t help, she tried all sorts of homeopathic, old-wives’ remedies.  Sometimes it seemed she was getting better, but soon enough her health would backslide.”  Sighing, Bob rubbed a hand over his scalp. 
> 
>  
> 
> “About the time the scans showed evidence of skeletal deformity, Vivi lost all trust in medical professionals and began seeing a midwife she found by word-of-mouth.  I wasn’t thrilled, but she seemed to prefer it to hospital at that point, so I let her do it her way.  A few months later she gave birth to Jackie at home, with the help of the midwife.  It was evident right away that Jackie had...difficulties, but nothing that affected the brain or CNS, thank god.  After Jackie was born, Vivi’s health improved almost immediately.  Frankly, I was just glad that—”
> 
>  
> 
> Bob stopped short as a woman suddenly entered the room from the hallway.
> 
>  
> 
> “Anna,” Bob said warily.
> 
>  
> 
> Anna ignored the two of them in favour of Sherlock.
> 
>  
> 
> “You must be the Vampire Detective.  Come to pass judgment on my fitness as a mother?” she asked coolly.
> 
>  
> 
> “Anna...”
> 
>  
> 
> “Of course not,” Sherlock answered dismissively.  “You’re not vampire, so if indeed anyone _is_ feeding from your son, it’s not you.”
> 
>  
> 
> John felt more than a little uncomfortable, witnessing the dirty “I told you so” look Anna leveled at Bob.
> 
>  
> 
> As Sherlock made to follow Anna to the baby’s room he caught John’s eye, only to look pointedly toward the kitchen table.  Or rather, the purple and grey trainer underneath.  All right, John could take a hint.
> 
>  
> 
> “Uh, but Jackie’s able to lead a fairly normal life, I hope?” John asked.  He didn’t see ramps or railings built into the layout of the foyer or sitting room, no evidence of exaggeratedly wide paths between furniture to provide room to maneuver with crutches, and the trainer seemed to indicate Jackie was walking at least well enough to kick her shoes about the house in typical teenaged fashion. 
> 
>  
> 
> “There were a series of surgeries when Jackie was much younger,” Bob said, “but the doctors could only do so much.  Jackie still has a bit of a twist to her spine that has one shoulder sitting higher than the other and gives her a limp.  It certainly doesn’t stop her from sneaking out of the house at all hours, but she’s always been self-conscious, and I’m afraid she’s been feeling it even more keenly since Freddy was born.  I’ve always been guilty of spoiling her, I’ll admit it.  It was just the two of us for so long after Vivi died, I think she sees Anna as competition for my attention,” Bob admitted with some embarrassment. 
> 
>  
> 
> Young girl feeling resentment toward the step-mother for taking her father away from her, and now a new, healthy baby in the mix...
> 
>  
> 
> “Is Jackie home?” John wanted to know.  “Could I talk to her about what happened with Anna?”
> 
>  
> 
> “No, she left early this morning for the library.  She has a paper due for school, and she needs to include primary resources, she said.”
> 
>  
> 
> John nodded understandingly.  He wondered how likely it was that Jackie had actually gone where she’d claimed.  If there was tension between Jackie and her stepfamily, John was hardly able to hold that against her.  During his own teenaged years, John remembered using any excuse under the sun to escape from Harry’s screaming fights with their parents. 
> 
>  
> 
> “In that case, would you mind if I took a quick look at her room?”

 ~  
  


> John stood in the middle of Jackie Ferguson’s bedroom and took in the

 

“That’s sufficient, thank you.”

 

John’s fingers paused over his laptop keyboard.  He turned to look at Sherlock.  “What?  You’re serious.”

 

Sherlock raised his eyebrows.  “We know what you found, I _did_ already cover that bit in my own version of events.  Besides, it’s not like you’ll need to go into detail for the report, since Jackie Ferguson was never an official suspect in the investigation.  We’ll have to avoid bringing her into it too clearly, if we don’t want to be forced to prosecute.”

 

“Or you could just hand the whole thing over to Mycroft,” John reminded him. 

 

Sherlock chose not to dignify that with a response.  “No, what’s far more interesting is what you missed.”

 

John removed his hands from the keyboard and inhaled deeply in that way he had which indicated he was silently counting backward from ten.

 

“All right, out with it,” John ordered, once the urge to throttle Sherlock had passed, presumably.  Sherlock had been informed it was a frequent urge.  “How did you know Jackie was the one we were looking for?”

 

“It was simple enough, once we had all the pieces.”  Sherlock jumped from the sofa and stepped over the coffee table to pace the rug with restless energy. 

 

“The woman in red on Club Tepes security footage was our primary person of interest.  Captured on video with Wexley before the two of them left together, she was likely the last person to see Wexley alive.  Physically, she was a fit for our suspect: female, small in stature.  But was she human or vampire?  Most of the victim’s blood was missing, but a vampire intending to feed on that blood wouldn’t have tainted it with a chemical sedative.  Why bother, anyway, when it was clear a little glamour would have been more than sufficient to convince Sean Wexley to follow any vampire outside and present himself as the proverbial lamb to the slaughter?”

 

Sherlock glanced in John’s direction to see John watching him, having shifted position in the desk chair to better do so.  Satisfied, Sherlock spun in place to begin another circuit of the sitting room floor.

 

“We then paid a visit to your old rugger pal ‘Big Bob’ Ferguson, whose daughter, we soon discovered, was convinced that by consuming human blood, she could ‘train’ her body into a stronger, more vampire-like constitution.  This would have hardly warranted mention on your blog, however, if not for what happened next.”

 

“What, you getting olfactorily invasive with Molly and me?” John asked.

 

Sherlock turned to frown at John, bewildered.  “What?  No.”  He pointed toward John’s laptop, where John had typed Sherlock’s account of their visit to the morgue.  “The dental impressions!  First molars, but no second molars?  Even sedated, it wouldn’t have been possible for a pre-pubescent human child to subdue a healthy adult male of Wexley’s size.  Vampires, however, with their significantly longer life-span, have a schedule of tooth eruption much delayed from that of humans.  In vampires, a single set of molars could mean an individual who _appeared_ as old as her early twenties, by human standards.  So our killer _was_ vampire.  A young one, possibly without a clan, as she clearly didn’t know what she was doing.  But why chloral hydrate?”

 

John leaned back to cross his arms over his chest.  “Americans call it ‘slipping someone the Mickey,’” he said.  “Chloral hydrate is soluble in water and alcohol, moderately fast-acting, has a relatively short half-life in the body.  The victim wakes disoriented, usually without memory of what happened.”  John scratched at his eyebrow.  “Of course, once pharmaceutical companies began pressing the tablets more tightly and colouring them so they couldn’t be dropped in people’s drinks unnoticed, non-consensual use generally died off.” 

 

“Unsurprising,” Sherlock replied.  “These days, it’s much more common for a potential victim to be plied with alcohol, marijuana, or cocaine.”  He pretended not to see the almost imperceptible tightening of John’s jaw at the word ‘cocaine.’ 

 

Really.  Sherlock hadn’t touched the stuff since deciding on a lark to officially employ himself in human law enforcement (and the temptation had been great, those first two years as a uniformed officer).  John knew Sherlock never fed on any blood that didn’t pass Mycroft’s exacting standards—he never fed on any blood that didn’t come out of a bag, for God’s sake.  John knew this, didn’t he?  Maybe? 

 

Maybe not, Sherlock was forced to concede.  A conversation for another time, then.  Sherlock was getting off track.

 

“The use of chloral hydrate as a ‘date rape’ drug, though, is hardly common conversation for most people...” he continued.

 

“Most people,” John agreed with a faint smirk.

 

“...So where would our vampire have even gotten it into her head to use it?”

 

“The stain on Bob’s cuff,” John said suddenly.  “He does microscopy work in a research lab—the stain was from a derivative of chloral hydrate, maybe a fixative?”

 

Sherlock beamed as John yet again proved himself worth ten of their colleagues at the Met.

 

“Chloral hydrate is an ingredient in Hoyer’s mounting medium, which is used in preparing botanical slides.  Jackie admitted herself, during our informative chat earlier tonight, that her father often talked about his work, providing an endless supply of anecdotes and trivia in what is probably Mr Ferguson’s attempt to cultivate Jackie’s interest in what is frankly one of the most tedious careers in the field of biological science that I can imagine.

 

“After seeing the toxicology report, I realized the scent of Jackie’s perfume, picked up on your fingers as you searched her room and touched those ‘fussy’ little pots of makeup, was the same one I’d detected on Wexley’s body at the crime scene,” he informed John.  “Jackie Ferguson, whose mother had been mysteriously ill for the entirety of Jackie’s gestation, only to experience an almost immediate recovery after giving birth.  Visits to a midwife, the use of so-called ‘home remedies’...  Anna Ferguson isn’t vampire, but what if Vivian Ferguson was?  One who kept from her husband what she really was, even after discovering she was pregnant, because she was determined to give birth to a human child?”

 

“The midwife would have been vampire, too,” John pointed out.

 

“Yes,” Sherlock agreed, “and she assisted Vivian with some remedies better left to the old wives whose tales inspired them.  The treatments left Vivian with a seemingly human child, but at a cost.  A cost which, ironically enough, would incite Jackie to a dangerous obsession with the idea that she could be ‘fixed,’ if only she was vampire.”

 

John’s mouth tightened.  “The online vampire-lovers’ forums.”

 

 “Jackie undoubtedly acquired some less than sound advice on how to jump-start that coveted ‘next step in evolution.’  Advice she tested with the unwitting assistance of little brother Freddy, and which worked despite being absolute rubbish because she was already genetically half-vampire.”  Sherlock pressed his palms together and raised them to his face, tapping his fingers against his bottom lip thoughtfully.  “One begins to wonder how long Jackie had seriously considered exsanguination of another person, before mere speculation became fully-formed intent.  If she was human, society would unequivocally condemn her behaviour as psychopathy and murder.  But Jackie wasn’t human, and she was starting to realize it.

 

“The success of her attack on Wexley emboldened her: Jackie now had proof that the end justified her means.  Needing only confirmation that Jackie was aware of what she’d done, and intended to try again, I contacted several members of my homeless network and had them keep an eye on Ferguson’s house for her comings and goings.  They followed her as far as the club tonight, which is where we found her, searching for her next victim.”

 

 “That’s...wow.”  John shook his head.  “Brilliant, putting it all together like that.”

 

Sherlock was pleased by the compliment, but he certainly didn’t “preen,” no matter what John wrote in his blog. 

 

“What you missed was Jackie’s stash of the remaining chloral hydrate.  Oh, don’t make that face, it was hardly your fault.  You haven’t my sense of smell, so you couldn’t have detected the perfume at the crime scene earlier, and if Jackie was clever enough to make a habit of erasing her internet history, she was at least clever enough to switch the drug from the container in which it was purchased.”

 

“Yeah, well.”  John sighed, turning back to his computer.  “It’s just a shame no one else will get to hear how you solved this one.  Instead, we’ll have to let them think we were finally stumped.  But I supposed a nearly-perfect solve rate is still quite good, for us.” 

 

John offered Sherlock a look of commiseration that Sherlock did not like, not one bit. 

 

“I mean, I don’t think anyone’s actually keeping track except for Lestrade, despite what I’ve overheard in the break room at work.”

 

Sherlock’s face fell. 

 

“It’s not like I can write this one up for the blog, either,” John said.  “Even if I change the names and the timeline, too many people we know follow my blog.  Lestrade, for one, would know the second he read the entry.”

 

John stood up to take his and Sherlock’s mugs to the kitchen to rinse them out.  Sherlock tried to decide if he was going to allow this blatant attempt at manipulation to work on him.

 

“We’re not falsifying evidence, no matter what you say, so I suppose we’ll just have to tell Lestrade that it was a vampire, and she got away.”  John disappeared through the kitchen doorway, raising his voice to compensate.  “Or, if you prefer, you can invent a sob story for her, and we can tell Lestrade you _let_ her go...  Of course, it’ll be a bit of a mess, considering how adamant you were at the crime scene about our murderer most emphatically _not_ being a vampire,” John mused.

 

“Oh _hell,_ ” Sherlock muttered under his breath.

 

By the time John returned to the desk for his computer, Sherlock was texting furiously from his armchair.

 

“Going to have Mycroft give Greg a call, then?” John asked.  Someone should tell John smugness was not attractive, but if Sherlock brought it up, there’d be another kettle/pot conversation.

 

“I have decided in this case that justice and your precious ‘due process’ come before personal grudges, no matter how warranted,” Sherlock announced. 

 

John laughed, and closed his laptop.

 

“Well I’m up off to a shower, then bed,” John informed him.

 

_Yes_ , Sherlock thought, _wash off the smell of that ill-bred troglodyte who would have glamoured you into letting him drink from you without a second’s hesitation._   But John didn’t know Sherlock had seen that, in the middle of the club, before Sherlock almost missed Jackie slipping through the fire exit, and Sherlock wasn’t about to enlighten him.

 

John was a stubborn and prideful human.  Almost as stubborn and prideful as Sherlock.  Sherlock was well aware John didn’t belong to him, no matter what compromise they had come to for the sake of simplification in their dealings with other vampires.  John wasn’t Anthea, nor even Lestrade; he had no interest in being _acquired_ by a vampire, much less by one as reckless and ‘bohemian’ as Sherlock.  John was a soldier, and John belonged only to himself, he had made that explicitly clear before he would agree to move into 221B, even with his former home a smoking hole in the ground. 

 

Sherlock didn’t know what was worse: the thought that one day, in a seeming blink of Sherlock’s eye, John would grow old and die, or the idea of John allowing himself to be seduced away, maybe even Turned, by someone who wasn’t Sherlock.

 

“What?” John asked eventually, shaking Sherlock from thoughts he usually avoided contemplating at all costs.

 

“Nothing,” he said, attempting neutrality, but feeling it come up short.  Sherlock offered the other man a tight smile.  “It’s nothing, John.  Good night.”

 

John looked as if he might say something more, but finally nodded.  “Night, Sherlock.”

 

Sherlock steepled his fingers before his mouth and closed his eyes, listening to John walk up the stairs, then quietly shut the door to his room.

  
  



End file.
